[pilsenarch]

Well, LVDW, I attended the GSD with Gang and have worked with her, and if there was any substance to what you are saying in her mind or in this project at this date, I would give you more credit for attempting to give this project conceptual rigor. But the themes you mention, positive and negative space, etc., have had no conscious part of the development (or lack thereof) in this project.

I know that the beauty you see in this work is subjective and you, and many others, love it and read a lot into it, but architecturally, what you speak of, "there is no there, there".

Architecture, as I am sure you know, is not just sculpture, it is function and context. Creating a 'negative space' that is an awkward few feet between two adjacent highrises in downtown Chicago isn't art, it's just bad design and bad urbanism.

I know for a fact that Jeanne was handed the design of the 3 tubes and she simply applied the frustum idea totally arbitrarily - it certainly wasn't developed with a regard to relating to the neighboring buildings or their rooftops. (Again, her only substantial conceptual basis was 'green' in that the glass facing down would be shaded - what makes that laughable is that the glass facing up more then cancels out any benefit from the downward glass)

BTW, your suggestion that the frustum transitions were meant to relate to it's neighbors' roof would seem to contradict your thesis that the building was designed as a "separate building" and a stand alone sculpture.

Regardless, I agree that the greater massing of the building holds a lot of promise, particularly with the larger skyline views that some talented forumers produced (the first I had seen), it just doesn't excuse the problems with the lower half, the potential problems with the program/function of the building, and the apparent complete separation of the form and function of the building.

Look at most of the supertalls going up in NY. With the possible exception of Stern's, all those massing/forms/concepts were directly related to the structural and functional requirements of the building. Yet, uniqueness, beauty, and the continuation of the streetwall was achieved in every single example. Addressing that inherent complexity of the city is part of what makes great architecture, full of, if you all will, "complexity and contradiction".